I love our host mother, Coco. She is a delicate creature who loves to dance, but she manages her household, daughters, and grandson with quiet strength and a servant's heart. She likes to baby us. She dishes out our food for us, and she makes us chocolate milk at night. Although I am 20-years-old, I still enjoy her spirit as she makes us food and asks us how our days went. She introduces us as her adopted daughters (although we've only been here for a week), and I find in her the qualities that I want to emulate--her openness in sharing her home and her life and her constant instinct to serve. Thus far, I would say that she is my favorite part of this experience, but then again, traveling is always about the people for me.

In that same vein, I also love Leigh Ann. We were friends before we came on this trip because we'd had some classes together, but being here together has made me feel as if she is my sister. She is quite easy to get along with, and some of my favorite moments are just when we laugh over shared stories or "argue" over who's going to kill the cockroaches with whom we share our living space. She generally doesn't wish to shower with them, and I prefer to lovingly name them than stomp them with my shoe. Overall, I can't imagine being here without her, and I know that God granted me such a friend to ease a loneliness that would have been hard to bear.

On Friday, Maricruz and Santiago, the daughter and grandson of our host mother, came to visit along with Andrea, Coco's niece. They were all quite fun. Santiago is 4, and he wants to be Spiderman. Andrea is 9, and we spent some time playing Spanish Scrabble with her. After breakfast, we retreated to our room so that Coco could visit with her family. We read and napped and just enjoyed the day. In the afternoon, Coco invited us to go to a friend's house to swim. We went rather hesitantly, but I'm glad that we did. Although we were out of our comfort zone in the vacation home of Maricruz' friends, we enjoyed seeing a Mexican "barbecue" which has the same basic feel as any such event in the U.S., just with different food. We didn't actually swim, but we relaxed by the pool. Amazingly enough, I didn't get burnt. In fact, I don't really think I got any sun although it was quite hot. We mainly kept to ourselves although we had one conversation with one of the men there who was drunk. (All of the Mexicans there were drinking all day, so they were all at least buzzed.) He was asking us questions, and we got on the subject of Honduras. When he heard that I had been there, he made a face and made a comment about it being ugly. Then he asked me which was prettier, Mexico or Honduras--I have found that that is a common question asked of me here. I smiled and said that they were both beautiful, but Honduras is my home. He scoffed a bit, not understanding. He gave us a full explanation of how Mexico has everything--that there is nothing more you could want. Being a man who said he had traveled, who had a gorgeous vacation home full of luxuries that would be foreign for my family's standard of living, I could see why he would say that. But, mentally, I also knew that I could never live an empty life of luxury. In fact, I have found in traveling that I can't really vacation easily either. I like seeing new places, meeting new people. I feel blessed when God provides ways for me to go anywhere, but I know too much. I could never fully go back to a life of ignorant enjoyment of "stuff" now that I know the reality of how the rest of the world lives. Everyone ended the night with dancing while Leigh Ann and I watched, and when we were leaving, everyone wanted pictures with us. It would seem that having a gringa show up to your party isn't an everyday thing. Who knows where those pictures will end up?

Today, we had a new girl come to live here. Her name is Lisa, and she is from Iowa. I think Leigh Ann and I (or perhaps just me) are rather intimidated by her. She clearly speaks better Spanish than the two of us, and she studied abroad for a semester in Spain. She is really nice though and likes to dance--Coco couldn't be happier, as dancing is the lifeblood of Mexico, and if you don't dance, as Leigh Ann and I don't, something is wrong with you.

Meanwhile, I have had very good days here. Friday I spent most of the day reading more from that Mother Theresa book and hidden under a staircase sitting on a bench, I found myself in tears more than a few times as I could feel an understanding of her heart--the urgency of the call, the beckoning to surrender it all no matter the cost, to love the little ones lost on the streets in the filth of humanity. The question God continually presented to her was, "Will you refuse Me?" And I know in my heart that He asks the same question of me during this time of preparation for Honduras. It is hard to think of selling everything, of truly leaving it all behind. Although I'm not as much of a packrat as I used to be, I tend to hold on to things--mementos more than anything, memories, past selves. But I know that whatever I don't surrender to Him--material or not--is a refusal. And each time I refuse, I am not just turning my back on Jesus, but also on the helpless in need of Jesus' touch. I cannot refuse, no matter the cost. There is a song by Jason Upton (if you haven't heard of his messages or his music, I highly recommend them) called "Dying Star" where he shares a revelation that God granted to his wife. It was about being chosen or selected by God in the Old Testament. He says that being selected wasn't always a very nice thing because it means being selected out of the whole, for the benefit of whole, even if that means the very destruction of your own life. I believe I have finally reached the place where I would rather be chosen by God, called by name, and lose everything than to live a life of so-called security lacking the adventure of His manifest presence and destiny. He has become the most real to me. As Jim Elliot said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

In the midst of a kind of homesickness, I have once again turned to John 15:
"Live in Me. Make your home in Me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing."
Today I was also reading Isaiah 1:
"Why this frenzy of sacrifices?" God's asking. "Don't you think I've had my fill of burnt sacrifices, rams and plump grain-fed calves? Don't you think I've had my fill of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats? When you come before me, whoever gave you the idea of acting like this, running here and there, doing this and that--all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?
That verse is timely for me because at times I find it difficult to be here in the stillness, seemingly idle. I am the kind of person who is constantly busy, filling every second of every day with some kind of work, some task. If I don't have one, I can generally think of one. And at times, I become aware that there is still a part of me that is trying to earn God's love with my frenzy and commotion. I act on what I think I am supposed to be doing rather than waiting on Him to reveal what He wants me to be doing. As we can see above, running is not what He wants in worship--and all of life is worship, or at least the opportunity to worship.

When I was last in Honduras, I found myself asking God what His purpose was in my being there at that time--clearly temporary although I knew at that time that I am called there. The word that He gave me came from the story of Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, when she was pregnant with John the Baptist. In short, God told me that I was "relishing a pregnancy." An odd metaphor, I know, but it's one that He has repeatedly brought to my attention again and again. It is why Isaiah 26 is of such importance to me. And it echoes again in John 16:
When a woman gives birth, she has a hard time, there's no getting around it. But when the baby is born, there is joy in the birth. This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain. The sadness you have right now is similar to that pain, but the coming joy is also similar. When I see you again, you'll be full of joy, and it will be a joy no one can rob from you. You'll no longer be so full of questions.
Aware of such a spiritual pregnancy, I was asking God this morning if there is a specific purpose in my being here in Mexico at this time. As I looked out our window, I became conscious that Leigh Ann and I live in the "upper room." Our room is on the third floor and overlooks the yard and the neighbor's greenhouse. It is no accident that I am living in the upper room. As I was pouring over Acts 1 and 2 today, I could see a common theme in the waiting--for His Spirit.

I cannot bear fruit unless I am joined with Him. He does not want frenzy and commotion from me. In Acts 1, Jesus says, "You don't get to know the time. Timing is the Father's business. What you'll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world." He was adamant, though, that they could not leave Jerusalem until they had received the Holy Spirit. In our worldly minds, don't we wonder why? They had already spent so much time with Jesus--they already knew His story, the story of the Gospel, firsthand! Why wasn't that enough? Why wasn't their knowledge and power of persuasion enough? It was because they needed His Spirit--it was not their work! It was the work of the Spirit. As it says in Zechariah, "These things only come about by my Spirit."

I believe sometimes we miss the most important part of the Great Commission. We know that we are called to evangelize as His followers. We know that He is sending us out into the world with His good news. But, we fail to wait to be joined with Him. It is rampant in churches today. We make programs. We have events. We do outreaches. We have agendas. We are a frenzy of commotion, but we lack the very God we think we're trying to worship. We have not taken the time to wait--to be joined with Him, to receive His Spirit. And as a result, it is our work, not His, although we may paste His name all over it. And yet we wonder why we fail to see a true revival, a real movement of captivated souls in love with Jesus. It's because we aren't in love with Him ourselves.

So, I treasure this time of stillness because I am in the upper room, waiting to be joined with Him. I have a heart for lost souls, but I want any movement to be His. It is only His Spirit that makes an eternal effect. It is all the work of His Spirit, merely breathing through me, His willing vessel. I cannot leave this spiritual Jerusalem until I have received His Spirit. Sometimes I wonder how I'm going to get to Honduras--how the finances will work out, where I will live, the hows, whens, and wheres. But I know that it is not my job to figure that out. I am called to be still and to actively wait in His presence. The definition of "wait" is "to remain or rest in expectation." Waiting is not a sedentary state. Expectation requires active hope and faith and a refrain from marring the emptiness with substitutes. How can God fill a space that is already occupied with something or someone else?

As the wind is whipping outside as it sounds that it is preparing to storm, I ponder what it was the Holy Spirit brought. I don't think it's any accident that I am going to language school here because there is a power in the mother tongue--using the mother tongue means meeting people where they are rather than expecting them to come to you. But that is another thought for another time.

Meanwhile, I appreciate your prayers. I am so very thankful for this journey, for the beauty of the mystery of God's plans in the midst of shedding my own.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah